


Thunderbird

by JulietteWolfe



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, F/M, Mutant Reader, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Sam Feels, Steve Is a Good Bro, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, all the hugs, because stupid hydra again, goddamnit HYDRA
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-16 12:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 18,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10571733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulietteWolfe/pseuds/JulietteWolfe
Summary: You were once the leader of Sam's para rescue team, and shortly after Sam retired, you were supposedly  killed on a mission with the remainder of your team. Key word: supposedly.In the years that followed, history became legend, legend became myth, and some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.Now, in the aftermath of the Avenger's Civil War, you re-emerge as more than a para rescue captain and a mutant. You are also a broken, damaged, and volatile lethal weapon.And finally, Sam understands Steve's struggle with Bucky.Set post-Civil War. Unrelated to my other work, Nightshade.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I should be updating things, not writing new things, but the idea came and I just...had to! XD
> 
> Credit to LOTR for the quote in the summary :p 
> 
> Your mutation, reader, is inspired by the Thunderbird from Fantastic Beasts, but since that is literally the only link and is only inspiration I didn't add this to the Fantastic Beasts fandom works :P 
> 
> More details to come as Chapters go on, and today: a double update, just for you!! :D
> 
> Enjoy! ^_^

“Hey, Sam, you busy today?” Steve called down the hallway. Sam stopped and sighed before turning to face his friend. He had hoped to slip out of the palace unnoticed, but apparently that wasn’t going to be an option. He turned around, the pale light of pre-sunrise barely lighting the hall.

            “Actually, yeah,” Sam said vaguely.

            Steve glanced from Sam to the door at the end of the hall and raised an eyebrow. “In the jet room? You never go down there.”

            “There’s just something I need to do back in New York, T’Challa gave me permission to borrow one of the jets,” Sam said tersely.

            “Then let me and Buck come with you. Stark is still up in arms against us, if he tries anything you’ll need the backup,” Steve said. It was more of an order than an offer, but Sam decided to try to get out of it anyway.

            “Isn’t he supposed to be going into the cryo chamber today?” he replied, but to his dismay Steve lightly shook his head.

            “Not ‘til this evening. There’ll be plenty of time for us to go with you.” Sam sighed, resigning to the fact that he couldn’t weasel his way out of this one.

            “Fine, but if you want to go you should get him up, cause I’m heading out now,” he all but grumbled, somewhat annoyed with Steve. This was something he had wanted to do alone, but now he didn’t have much of a choice.

            The three soldiers piled into a jet as T’Challa waved a quick farewell. A couple of the palace workers carried buckets of flowers into the jet, and Sam nodded a thank you as they retreated. He plopped down into the pilot seat, and Steve took up the co-pilot spot. Bucky nestled himself into the seat behind Steve, and they took off.

********

            They landed in New York before the sun rose, thanks to the jet’s advanced speed tech and time zones. Sam barely said a word as he grabbed a bucket of flowers, only muttering a quiet “you mind grabbing the rest?” to the supersoldiers. They complied, and squashed themselves into a waiting cab.

           “Central Park, please,” Sam told the driver, before staring absently out of the cab’s window.

           “You three goin’ to the Memorial Day service?” the cabby asked, and Steve answered with a shrug. The rest of the taxi ride was eerily quiet, and the car itself seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when it pulled up alongside the massive park. Sam snapped out of his trance and paid the cabby before half-jumping out. Steve and Bucky followed, and Steve threw an apologetic glance to the driver as he shut the door.

            Sam walked quickly, barely acknowledging the other two soldiers. Steve grew more concerned by the second as they practically chased after him; this wasn’t Sam’s usual behavior at all. He ducked down a small path inbetween the trees, zig-zagging with the trail as it led them deeper into the manmade forest. Eventually the trail ended at a small set of stone steps that led up to a small mausoleum-type building. Sam stopped at the bottom of the stairs to dig around in his coat, and Steve read the plaque that was affixed to the top of the building. It read, “58th Special-Ops Rescue Squadron Memorial,” and he wondered why there was an entire building dedicated to them; from his understanding, only Sam’s friend Riley had died, not that he didn’t deserve to be remembered, but he was pretty sure that entire memorials weren’t constructed for individual people in that context.

            “I thought only one of your guys died?” Bucky asked, voicing Steve's thoughts, and Steve inwardly cringed at Bucky’s unintentional boldness.

            “No.” He finally fished out a key, and climbed the stairs to unlock the heavy padlock that held the stone doors shut. “Before Riley died, when the Falcon suit was temporarily approved, they made a special-ops rescue team out of fliers. There were 5 of us in total, but only four of us had the suit. Our leader was a pretty powerful winged mutant; she’s the one who taught us all how to use our wings, but she was one of my oldest friends,” Sam half-whispered as he pushed open the heavy door.

            They walked into a room that was very much styled after an old-fashioned mausoleum. 5 stone caskets lay in a row, and at the head of each was a life-size stone statue. There were 2 statues on the ends that Steve didn’t recognize, but he recognized the one on the left of the central statue as Sam’s friend Riley, and the one on the right as Sam himself. That part unnerved him a little, but he assumed that they built it in for eventual use. The central statue drew everyone’s attention; it was of a beautiful young woman, no older than 25, but what stood out the most on the statue were her wings. Two massive, feathery wings sprouted from just below her shoulder blades, stretching out almost protectively behind the other 4 statues. A second set of wings, about half as large, lay half-folded by her hips from where they emerged by the base of her magnificent tail, which branched into 2 long, thin tails that looked more like individual feathers and wrapped around to rest in front of her feet. While the supersoldiers took in the art masterpiece, Sam distributed flowers and water into the vases at the bases of the caskets, excluding his own.

            “What happened to the rest of them?” Steve asked tentatively.

            “After I left, they stayed in operation; the guys—Nighthawk and Condor— signed waivers that stated that they knew and accepted the risks of continuing to use the Falcon suits, after what happened to Riley. About six months later, I get a visit from the guy running the operation, and he told me that they had been on a nighttime rescue mission in Siberia—in the middle of a whiteout blizzard— when they got snuck up on by some high-tech stealth bombers. I guess they didn’t hear the communication on comms, or them coming over the wind, and…” he trailed off, looking lost in thought for a minute. “Anyway, they built this memorial for them and put Riley in here too, with his family’s permission of course, even though they could only put the guys in here.”

            “What about your leader?” Bucky asked.

            “Thunderbird? They never found her body. The team had to wear cams on their goggles, to document rescues and operations…they only know (y/n) died because she was the first one the bombers hit,” he replied, a trace of tears rising to his eyes.

            “Were you two really close?” Steve asked, as Sam sat down on the floor by the casket.

            “Platonically, she was like a big sister to me…to be honest, she was my Bucky,” he said, choking up as he said the last few words. He scooted to face the statues, and began talking to the statue of (y/n). He talked about everything that had happened in the past year—the missions he had gone on with the team, everything that had happened with Tony, and little day-to day anecdotes. The supersoldiers sat behind him by the doors, half listening as they guarded the small building. They stayed that way until mid-afternoon, when Sam finally said goodbye, and they all headed back to the jet.

 

                                                                                                    *******

            “Pulse rate.”

            “We’ve been through this a million times, every hour of every day for what, 12, 13 years now? It’s always the same, 45 bpm, just like the blood pressure is always 120 over 80!” the lab assistant whined.

            “Remember the anomaly back in 2013? All the agents who died? Do you want that to happen again?” the doctor snapped, and the assistant flinched and shook his head. “Then shut up and give me the readings when I tell you to.”

            Even though the assistant was practically a full-fledged doctor that exuded confidence around everyone else, he still cowered in the face of his mentor. “Monitor the subject. I’m getting lunch.” The doctor said, tapping the last few entries into the computer database and locking the program. The assistant nodded, and the doctor left the room, his long lab coat sweeping behind him. The assistant rose from his seat and walked over to the tank, checking for anything abnormal.

            You floated there, suspended in a transparent, pale green, thin gel-like liquid, held up by hooks and supports. Only 3 tubes emerged from the otherwise sealed holes in the top of the tank; one for air that covered your nose and mouth like an anesthetic mask, one with multiple branches that monitored your every vital, from blood stats to brain waves, and one that carried the solution to your veins. It was specially formulated to both give you the nutrients and hydration you need, in a way that your body would use it all as not to create waste products. It was mixed with their latest experimental drug; a mix of a supersoldier serum, with mutation-enhancing properties and a memory-blocking agent. Hopefully you would be more successful than the Winter Soldier, and with any luck, the memory blocker would keep you obedient and significantly less volatile. The lab assistant felt sorry for you, though he would never voice it out loud. Even though your bones had been reset and had healed over to their original state, thanks to the serum, and your other injuries had faded save light scarring, you were a sorry mess. Your once-magnificent wings were painfully clogged with years of unmanaged molting, and blood from your long-healed injuries still held many of your feathers together in clumps. Your tail was ratty from lack of maintenance and clumped by the solution you were suspended in, and even though your mutation didn’t let you physically age past 23 (a condition not helped by the introduction of the supersoldier serum), your mutation had normal cycles that had been ignored by Hydra and its scientists. Other than very basic underwear, you were also naked, but the pity and guilt the assistant felt for you chased out any inkling of attraction he might have felt.

            He returned to his seat, wondering briefly why the doctor was taking so long to come back. It never took this long for Zola to bring food; maybe he was flaunting his grandfather’s namesake over the cafeteria at new agents again. He shook his head as he returned to watching your vitals on the computer screen. Everything was normal and your brainwaves were just so…peaceful. He quickly zoned out watching them, and his eyelids eventually closed. A five minute nap couldn’t hurt, could it?

    The assistant jolted awake, disoriented as the sound of a loud beeping assaulted his ears. He immediately checked your vitals—everything was fine, your blood pressure, brainwaves—but your heart rate was on its way to through the roof. He glanced up at you, and you were still there, unmoving and frozen in time. He didn’t know what to do; Zola had only ever told him to monitor, he never told him what to do if something went wrong! He clicked a couple of buttons, sending a mild tranquilizer through your IV in the hopes of calming you down. As he watched the pale liquid shoot through the overhead tube, he secretly hoped you would wake up and escape. The thought of waking you and setting you free had crossed his mind before, but he was too closely monitored by Zola and the people behind the cameras; you were their most important experiment right now, and they wouldn’t let anything happen to you. As the tranquilizer entered your bloodstream, your heart rate slowed, and the frantic beeping stopped when it returned to normal. The assistant opened the lab door and peered into the hallway; there was nobody there, save for the two sentries that guarded the room. He went back inside, and grabbing a form, wrote down what had happened. Zola would put it into the system when he got back, and the paper would surely go in your file. He took your file out of the cabinet and put it on Zola’s desk, along with the incident report, before sitting back down. The second his ass hit the seat, however, the room erupted into chaos. The frantic beeping began again, and your heart rate shot up past what it was the first time. Like a domino effect, your temperature rose from the tranquilizing, induced 98 degrees to its normal 110. Your breathing rate increased, and your brainwaves went from ambient delta sleep waves to the short and spiky beta waves. You were awake.

The assistant barely had time to register this before the door was kicked open by agents, with Zola taking up the rear. “You’ve been a faithful assistant, but unfortunately, you’ve outlived your usefulness, and you know far too much to be let go alive,” he said, a dark smile twisting his lips.

“What-“ the assistant began, but a loud shattering of glass and a bullet piercing his forehead cut him off.


	2. Dark Clouds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The other side of the beginning! :D  
> This turned out to be a triple update, the next chapter will be up momentarily!
> 
> Let's see this from your perspective, reader.....

Your mind had been a void of silence for longer than you could remember. You were only partially aware of your surroundings, and you could hear things, but you could never remember anything after the sound stopped. You felt like a silent prisoner inside your own body. When you tried to remember anything, you only knew nameless faces of men who had tortured you or trained you; even then, that was fuzzy. The only thing you remembered clearly was how to fight, though you sensed that it was more instinct and reflex now than substantial memories. You had another, very faint memory of something bright, and screaming that was not your own, and faces of men in dark suits with a red skull symbol being thrown against walls, but the details had almost faded out of existence as well. You knew that you knew basic things about the world outside--that you lived on Earth, that you worked for a man whose name you could not remember; but anything else, especially about yourself and your past, was missing, like pages torn out of a book. Outside of these little flashes of memory and the occasional noise that you heard and forgot, along with the dry air you breathed in, you weren’t sure if you existed. You didn’t feel or experience anything else, and when you fell into a deeper rest, nothing changed. It was just a more tranquil version of your normal sense-deprived environment. Every so often, you would feel a little flutter in what would be your chest, like the thrill of adrenaline, accompanied by the thought “ _escape_ ”, but you didn’t know why to escape, or where to escape to, and the feeling was always followed up with the deeper rest.

            You gave up contemplating the scraps of information that floated around in your brain when you felt a mental tugging. You felt as though you were being beckoned from the dark void, like something was pulling you to the surface. You panicked, unsure of what was happening. It reminded you of the weird memory you had of the men flying against walls, and it gave you a sickening feeling of being in trouble. You suddenly felt like you were being pushed back down into the darkness, and even though that sickening feeling dissipated, it was replaced by a feeling that burned more intensely—anger— and was accompanied by the feeling that whispered “ _escape_ ”. You weren’t sure why you felt this way about returning to the emotionless bubble, but you decided to follow your gut. You tried to fight it, but the force pushing you down was too strong. You felt another emotion—disappointment. You resolved that should that feeling come back, you would follow it, no matter what the result was; it had to be better than sitting in nothingness and rifling through meaningless and detached fading memories of people who had hurt you.

            In what felt like only a few minutes, the pressure holding you in the dark lifted, and you felt the beckoning tug again. Your curiosity and determination overrode the guilty in-trouble feeling, and you followed that pulling feeling with all your might. The world around you was becoming clear, like you were rising to the surface of water. For the first time that you could really remember, you felt like you were actually a living being; you felt the dry, chilly air being drawn in and out of your lungs with each breath, and you could feel your heart beating. Somewhere in your mind, you realized that this sensation was waking up.

 _“How long have I been asleep?”_ you wondered, as you gradually became more aware of the numb tingle that covered the entirety of your body. A loud bang made you jump, and your eyes shot open. They immediately squinted against the bright light from the room. Men in suits, similar to the ones you remembered from your faint memory, filed into the room, followed by a short, bald man in a lab coat.

 _“Zola”_ you remembered, putting a name to a face. You immediately got a feeling of anger and nausea combined; you recognized it as hatred and fear. Once again, you were unsure why you felt this way, but clearly that man was nobody good and out to harm you. Looking around, you saw that you were in a glass tank, filled with some kind of jelly-like liquid. The dry air pushed its way into your nose and mouth through a tube, and all sorts of needles and attachments were stabbed or stuck to your skin. You lifted your arm to remove whatever was pressing on your head, and it felt like you were moving in slow motion. As fast as the liquid let you move, you tore off the attachments and hooks suspending you. With one last distasteful breath of the air from the tube, you unhooked the strap, pushing it off your face. Bubbles flowed out of it, momentarily blinding you. You swam toward the glass, and you felt as if you were trying to pull the earth itself. Your wings were weighing you down, but you had to get out.

            The men were pointing their guns at a young man in a lab coat, and you slammed your arms on the glass. Nobody noticed, and you soon realized that the glass was far too thick to break through. You looked around the bottom of the tank for a drain, but saw none. Your lungs began to burn with each extra effort you made, and you knew that if you didn’t act fast, you would drown; the mask was too high to swim to in time now. A loud gunshot startled you and you flinched; and as you flinched, you saw a bright zap of light, and the glass before you shattered into a million unimportant pebbles. The liquid splashed into the room, carrying you with it in a tidal wave. Zaps of electricity traveled along it, and the small, bald man ran from the room. The men with guns turned to face you, but they convulsed and collapsed when the liquid touched them.

 _“Electrocuted,”_ your mind told you, and you stood up, bracing shakily against the table. The feeling in your chest spread to a burning in your sides—panic, telling you to escape once more.

 The brightness of the room dazed you, but you quickly got your bearings. You undressed one of the agents and donned his clothes, pulling them tight over your wings. You struggled against large clumps of feathers to fold them up. You glanced at a folder on a desk, and instinct told you to grab it. You stuffed it into the inside of the coat and headed toward the door, your legs somewhat shaky from disuse. Luckily, whatever they had done to you retained the muscle in them. As you opened the door, a loud alarm rang through the building, and your gut told you to run.

            You limped down the hallway, moving as fast as you could as you struggled to retain control over your body. Even though you couldn’t remember what it was like to run before, you were pretty sure you weren’t this strong or fast. You saw a door labeled “Stairs” and slammed the door open, and you immediately lost your footing and fell down the first flight. Panic overtook you and you half crawled, half fell down the other flights of stairs until you saw a door marked “Exit”. Deep down, you knew that running away wouldn’t be that easy. As you threw open the door, you were dazzled by a light that was even brighter than the ones in the hallways—the sun. You heard shouting behind you and you blindly ran. Your vision adjusted to the light as you ran, and you could see just in time to avoid running into a chain link fence. Glancing back, you saw men pouring out of the building like ants, and you took the coat off. You wrapped it around the file and threw it over the fence before jumping onto the fence yourself. You scaled it, hooking your fingers and toes into the gaps, and you ignored the slashes in your skin that the barbwire at the top left.  You jumped down, landing gracefully like a cat, snatched up the coat-file burrito, and ran into the trees. You dodged between the trunks, and moments later, the air was filled with flying bullets. You kept running, and when space opened up between the trees, you frantically flapped your wings. It proved no more useful than jumping, however; you were pretty sure that all the extra feathers had you grounded. You folded your wings up as tight as you could and changed direction, running to the right. You couldn’t hear the one-sided battlefield behind you anymore, but you still kept running.

Eventually, the panic and adrenaline cleared, and your lungs burned with the sudden exertion and demands you had placed on them. While your muscles were still fully useful, you had become somewhat out of shape. You wrapped the coat around you again, and you tucked your tail and secondary wings into your pants. You came upon a small town, and as you stumbled out of the forest, an older woman rushed over to you.


	3. Otto and Lilli

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this and the last chapter all at once but that seemed like a bit...much XD  
> Enjoy!
> 
> German guide:  
> *This may not be 100%, as I am not fluent in German!  
> Bist du verletzt - Are you hurt
> 
> Nein, das glaube ich nicht - No, I don't think so 
> 
> Lebst du hier? Ich erkenne dich nicht - Do you live here? I don't recognize you
> 
> Du kannst für heute Nacht hier bleiben. Mein Mann hat Geld, wir können nach Haus fliegen - You can stay here for tonight. My husband has money, we can fly you home
> 
> Woher wusstest du, dass ich nicht hier bin- how did you know I'm not from here
> 
> Du bist Amerikaner, ja? Dein Deutsch ist gut, aber du hast einen Akzent. Wir bekommen hier viele Touristen, kampieren im Schwarzwald; ich würde sagen, du kommst aus New York, - You are American, yes? Your German is good, but you have an accent. We get a lot of tourists here, camping in the Black Forest; I would say you come from New York
> 
> Das wäre toll, danke! - That would be great, thank you!
> 
> Ich habe etwas Kleider, wenn du etwas möchtest - I have some spare clothes, if you want some
> 
> Nehmen Sie Ihre Auswahl, das Abendessen wird bald fertig sein, - take your pick, dinner will be ready soon

“Bist du verletzt?” she asked, checking you over.

“Nein, das glaube ich nicht,” you replied. You had no idea how you knew German, but you were thankful that you did.

“Lebst du hier? Ich erkenne dich nicht,” she said, a somewhat suspicious tone creeping into her voice. You decided to play it safe, and you told her that you had come to the forest to go camping, but you got lost, and you had no idea where your things are—and your money was as your camp. The woman nodded sympathetically and led you into the town. A few turns down cobblestone streets, and you were following her into a little cottage.

“Du kannst hier für heute Nacht hier bleiben. Mein Mann hat Geld, wir können dich nach Hause fliegen,” she said, and you sat on the edge of a chair.

"Woher wusstest du, dass ich nicht hier bin?" you asked, curiosity seeping into your voice.

"Du bist Amerikaner, ja? Dein Deutsch ist gut, aber du hast einen Akzent. Wir bekommen hier viele Touristen, kampieren im Schwarzwald; ich würde sagen, du kommst aus New York," she replied, smiling at you. You nodded; at least you knew what country you must be from now.

“Das wäre toll, danke!” you said, your smile breaking into a grateful grin. She began bustling around the house, getting a dinner in the oven.

“Ich habe etwas Kleider, wenn du etwas möchtest,” she said, eyeing your suit. She seemed not to notice the lumpiness of your wings; the bagginess of the jacket likely did enough to hide their form. You accepted graciously, and she led you up the stairs to a spare bedroom. She opened an old wardrobe and began taking neatly folded heaps of clothes out and laying them on a dresser. “"Nehmen Sie Ihre Auswahl, das Abendessen wird bald fertig sein," she said gently, leaving the room. She shut the door behind her, and the moment her footsteps disappeared, you quickly shed the coat. You put the file on the bed as you finished removing the much too big suit, and you stretched out your wings to examine them. Your feathers were severely mashed together, so much so that it was painful to shift them; It felt like someone was trying to rip them all out at once. You began grabbing handfuls of the loose stuff, pulling out massive clumps of feathers. You opened the bottom drawer of the wardrobe and took out the few things that were in it; you proceeded to put the feathers in there, so you wouldn’t have to explain a massive pile of feathers in the middle of the room. At least you wouldn't be there to explain the drawers of feathers, either, if luck went your way.

When you were done, your wings felt much lighter, and you could fold them flush to your body. The feathers were still clumped with dried suspending fluid, but you would worry about a bath later. You put on some loose-fitting pants and a pair of boots, carefully tucking in your tail and wings as you had before. You also tucked in the ends of the long primary feathers on your top wings before carefully pulling on a hoodie. You checked to make sure no stray feathers were wandering the floor, and you stuffed the clothes back in the drawer and shut it. The file went between the mattress and box springs of the bed, for safekeeping.

As you made your way down the stairs, the German woman called out, “Just in time!”

“You speak English?” you asked, and you realized how foreign your own voice speaking English sounded.

“Ja, not too much, but I get by. Otto will be home any minute,” she said warmly, dividing up the food between plates. She gave you a quick once over, punctuating the kind scrutiny with a nod. “You look better.”

“Thank you. For everything,” you said, leaning on the wall. She nodded, and told you that they would buy you a one-way ticket for New York that would leave late that night. She also told you that you could have the other spare clothes from upstairs, and that her name was Lilli. When her husband came home, you all ate, and you reiterated your camping story. As Lilli helped you pack the clothes, Otto pulled up the airport website to buy you a ticket.

“What’s your name?” he asked, and you realized that you actually had no idea.

“Um, Jill,” you stammered, “Jill Summers.” It wasn’t you real name, you knew that much, but the name would work for now.

“Summers, eh? You related to that laser guy from the X-Men?” he asked lightheartedly, and you shook your head. He had much better English skills than his wife. “Am I right in assuming that you lost your passport and ID and all that too?” he asked, and you nodded. He pulled out his phone and took a picture of you, catching you by surprise.

“What are you doing?” you asked, somewhat suspicious.

“Making you a fake ID and passport. Normally I don’t condone fooling the government, but it’s a lot less hassle than going through all that to either get new ones or tryin’ to fish yours outta the forest. It’ll get you home, and you can get your new stuff there,” he said, smiling at you kindly. He took out a couple of odd-looking pieces of tech and printed off an ID card first, and then a passport. He handed them to you, and you stuffed them in your pocket, thanking him as  you did so.

As the night wore on, Lilli went to bed and you thanked her for all they had done, and Otto helped you carry your things to his truck. He told you all about another lost camper they had helped as he drove you to Frankfurt, and when you got to the airport, he helped you take your luggage to the gate. You said your last farewells as they called for people to board, and as you got on the plane, you got a sense of complete loneliness.

8 hours later, you were walking out of the JFK International Airport. It was 3 am, and you still had more than enough energy. You began walking, wandering down streets filled with shops and late-night people wandering the town, until you reached the suburbs. You walked until you found a house that was for sale; it was overgrown with weeds, and you suspected that nobody would be coming to look at it for some time. You broke the side window with a rock, waiting to make sure that nobody was coming to investigate. A dog barked a few houses down, but otherwise the still of the night remained undisturbed. You tossed your bags through first, and pulled yourself in after. You dragged the luggage through the house until you found an area out of sight of the windows; it happened to be the hallway. You let go of your luggage and sat on the carpet, sighing heavily as the day’s events and jetlag caught up with you. It was a lot of strain on your confused— and, previously, mostly blank—mind, but you accepted that you were safe. You still had no idea who you were, but as long as you weren’t being chased by madmen with guns, you were happy. You unzipped one of the bags where you knew Lilli had hidden some snacks, and a white envelope fell out. “For Jill” was scrawled on the front, and you quickly opened it. Your mouth fell open as you pulled out a small wad of cash and a note. The note read:

“Jill,

This is to help you get back on your feet. We hope you get home safely!

                                    Sincerely,

                                                Otto and Lilli”

You were touched by their kindness and tears welled to your eyes. As much as you wanted to find somewhere else to stay, tiredness from the day soon took over, and you curled up with your head on one of your bags, succumbing to the first self-controlled sleep that you could remember.


	4. Chasing Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the next (and admittedly short) Chapter!  
> Look at you, going out and adulting! In the story, at least :p 
> 
> Enjoy guys!
> 
> P.S. : Look out for the Easter Egg!

             _Cold wind whipped your face, and you could barely see through the dark, yet pale massive snowflakes that threatened to cover your goggles with every gust. You knew this mission wasn’t going to be easy, but you also didn’t think the storm would be this bad. You could barely hear anything over the whistling of wind in your ears—you could barely hear the other two talking through your earpiece. You had thought about landing and going on foot multiple times, but you were still miles away from the base, you would never make it in time to save the hostages, if you survived the long trek in this weather—not that flying was particularly conducive to survival in this weather either. You looked around you, and you couldn’t see your teammates through the blizzard. You suddenly heard yelling through your earpiece, and a bright light flashed behind you, and—_

            You jolted awake, your heart beating out of your chest. You sat up and put your head in your hands, taking deep, shaky breaths.

 _“What the hell was that,”_ you thought, trying to wrap your head around it. _“I was sleeping. It had_ _to have been a dream.”_   You stood up, stumbling slightly, still not fully awake, as you made your way to one of your bags.

 _“But then,”_ you thought, _“it felt so real…”_   You shook your head, deciding not to dwell on it, and that it must have just been a very vivid dream. After all, you hadn’t actually dreamed in a very long time, so it made sense to you that your first actual dream would be very vivid and questionable. You pulled out the little necessity bag that Lilli had put together for you; a brush, some deodorant, toothpaste and a toothbrush, and a little bottle of light-smelling perfume. You went through the bag, using all but the toothpaste and toothbrush. You resolved to get changed and brush your teeth once you'd had a shower. You reopened the envelope and counted the money. It definitely wasn’t enough to rent even a studio apartment, but you wondered if you might be able to get a PO Box. Then you could get a job, and you could save and afford an apartment. You shoved your bags into a closet, so hopefully if anyone came looking in the house, they wouldn’t discover your presence.

You cautiously peered out of the living room window; the neighboring houses’ cars were gone, so assumed that everyone had gone off to work. You stuffed the money and your fake ID in your pocket, and with one more glance around and one more wings-hidden check, you slipped out through the broken side window. You crept along the fence until you reached the sidewalk, and then you assumed a casual walk—if anyone was still home, they’d think you were just out for a midmorning stroll. You eventually reached the main connecting street, and fell into line with people walking. You saw a teenage kid, maybe 16 years old, waiting at the crosswalk. You quickly tapped his shoulder, and you internally winced at the painful black eye he sported when he turned to you.

“Excuse me, would you mind telling me where the nearest post office is?” you asked, trying not to stare at the other injuries that littered his face. The poor kid looked like he got beaten up by a college student.

“Uh, two streets down that way, next to Barry’s Beauty Parlor, can’t miss it,” he said, pointing down the street on your right.

“Thanks,” you paused, wondering what his name was.

“Peter,” he said, filling in the blank for you. You nodded and replied, “Thanks, Peter. Be careful out there,” as your eyes flitted over his injuries again. He muttered a quick “Sure,” before darting across the street when the walk light came on. You followed his instructions and walked down the street, and you bolted across in a break of traffic. You walked into the post office, and a man in a brown and tan suit looked up from his computer.

“Can I help you?” he asked, his tone droning and bored.

“I was wondering if I could rent a PO Box here for work? I just moved here, I’m living with a friend until I can get on my feet,” you lied easily. He asked for your ID and you obliged.

“If you’re living with a friend, whose address is this?” he asked, suspicious.

“My mom, she and I had a bit of a falling out, I haven’t renewed my ID yet so it’s still my mailing address,” you replied. These were the same excuses you had given security at the airport, and they were a lot stricter than some bored post office worker. He nodded and gave you your card back, along with a set of keys. “Your Box number is on the key. It’s a $10 down payment, $30 a month after,” he said gruffly. You pulled a 20 out of your pocket and handed it to him.

“Can this go towards the monthly?” you asked, and he nodded.  “Also, what’s the zip code here again? I keep forgetting it.”

“11422. If you’re gonna live here a while, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the town. Queens is a pretty big area,” he said, chuckling. You smiled at him before leaving the building; he hadn’t noticed you steal a pen while he was scrutinizing your ID. You wrote the PO Box address on your hand; PO Box 13, Queens, NY 11422.

 _“Now, to find a job,”_ you thought, and you headed for the beauty supply just up the street. It was a low profile job, and you could work under the radar, for the most part.

As you walked in, the cashier girl chirped a cheery “Welcome to Lucky Beauty Supply! How can I help you today?” with a little too much pep.

“I was wondering if you guys are hiring? I’m new to town, I don’t have my name on a lease yet, just a PO Box…” you said quietly. The girl thought for a minute, and she asked for your ID. After going through the same routine as with the mailman, she offered you a full-time job as a cashier; she was in desperate need of help, she told you, and nobody had answered the months' worth of job ads she'd posted around town. It turned out that she was the manager, so she did your interview on the fly, and you just needed to show proof of residency when you got a place—until then, she agreed to pay you every other day so you could save get an apartment. She offered to let you start that day, and even though you weren’t really prepared, you accepted her offer.

After a long 9 hour shift, you were half dead on your feet. You walked home the way you had come, pausing to get fast food, and you wished you knew a faster way. Even though the city was still alive, almost everyone was sound asleep in bed, and you felt watched and exposed as you walked home alone in the dark. You eventually crept up the side of your temporary home, slinking in the window like a stray cat. You ate, brushed your teeth from a bottle of water, changed into pajamas, and quickly settled down for the night. You even took a few minutes to stop and preen your feathers. It wasn’t long before you resumed using your bag for a pillow; you had a feeling you would be doing that for quite some time.

 


	5. Chaos is Relative: Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Double update time!!!  
> Now that you've gotten all settled in, it's about time something else happened, right? :P  
> Read on, dear reader, for there is much chaos to be had here!!
> 
> маленькая птица - little bird
> 
> Enjoy!!

“I want to visit Brooklyn and see if my mom’s old apartment is still there, and get more of an idea of how things have changed since I was a kid,” Steve said, looking out of the massive floor-to-ceiling windows that afforded him a view of the foggy jungle. T’Challa nodded, taking a sip of his drink.

“You can borrow a jet for the day, if you’d like. I have nowhere to go, and I assure you that Bucky will be kept safe,” he said, watching the palace servants rush to and fro in the courtyard below. Steve nodded and thanked him.

“I’ll come with you. After all, Tony’s still up in arms against us, right?” Sam said, approaching the two. Steve smirked at his friend, remembering when he used those very words to go with him those months ago.

 “I’m sure I’ll be fine, Sam. But if you’d like to come too, I’d appreciate the company,” Steve chuckled. Sam grinned at him, and T’Challa continued sipping his drink, amused.

“There’s something you may want to check on while you’re there. A couple informants of mine have alerted me about a possible Hydra presence in Queens. It looks like a mission, not a base, but it may be wise to check it out,” T’Challa said. Sam and Steve looked at each other, and Steve nodded his agreement to T’Challa, who gave them a grateful glance. He walked the two soldiers to the jet room and waved a farewell as Steve and Sam clambered into the jet. This time, Steve sat in the pilot seat, and Sam took on the duties of co-pilot.

“Now Steve, be careful, don’t crash us into the ocean,” Sam joked, and Steve gave him a look that made him burst into laughter. They landed at the JFK airport a couple hours later, and hopped on the next train to Brooklyn. They would check out the Hydra issue after they explored a bit, so they didn’t draw unnecessary attention before they did what they had come for in the first place.

*******

 

You had been working at the beauty supply for 4 months now, and aside from the fact that you couldn’t remember anything about yourself before your escapade, your life was going great. You were now the proud owner of a small studio apartment in Queens; though you lived more on the border of Queens and Brooklyn, in Woodhaven. Anna, the beauty supply manager, had given you a few promotions, and you made just enough to support your apartment, train trips to and from work, and food. Luckily, your electricity and water bills were included in your monthly lease payment. You still hadn’t read through your file as you hadn’t had the time or energy, but it was safely stored in the back of your pantry. Nobody had come after you since the forest in Germany, but you still had a bad feeling about it.

You thought through all of this as you meticulously lined up hair dye applicator bottles on a shelf. As you moved on to restocking the gloves and other application supplies, you searched your brain for any other memories. You felt better now that you had clear, good memories that you could actually remember, but the faint memories that were there from before still unnerved you, with the same feeling provoked by strange shapes half seen through fog. What bugged you more was your ability to remember certain dreams with an unnatural clarity. You hadn’t had many of these memorable dreams since your first night in town, and the rest consisted of random, meaningless things; hell, one was a short one about putting on combat boots over camo pants. You vaguely wondered if they were memories, but since you really had nothing else to back it up, you put it out of your mind.

“Hey Jill, there’s some guy loitering outside, you mind telling him to buzz off?” Anna said, glancing towards the window. A man leaned against it, smoking a cigarette, and even though there wasn’t anything particularly menacing about him, you got a sinking feeling that he wasn’t good news. You'd seen him around the area increasingly over the past week; if he weren't so immaculately dressed, you'd have thought he was just some random vagrant.

“You should probably go in the back, I have a bad feeling about this guy,” you muttered to her. She looked at you, half concerned and half amused, but she humored you and obliged. As she ducked into the back room, you headed for the door. The September chill washed over you as you opened it, and you addressed the man, wanting to get this over with as fast as possible.

“Excuse me, you can’t loiter here,” you said, straightening up and resisting the urge to shiver against the cool air. The man continued to stand and smoke, but just as you were about to repeat yourself, he responded.

“And who’s going to stop me? You, маленькая птица?" He turned, and you felt him look you dead in the eye through his sunglasses. "You can’t even remember your own name.”

You stared at him, fear and anger gripping your stomach like an angry fist. As he lifted his hand to take another drag off the cigarette, his sleeve pulled down, and you saw a tattoo in the octopus-skull design that your previous captors were so fond of. He then dropped the rest of his cigarette on the sidewalk and crushed it with his foot. Before he could move to attack you, you bolted into the shop, shutting and locking the door behind you.

“Anna!! Go out the back!!” you yelled, jumping the counter. You snatched Anna’s pistol from the holster that was Velcro-ed to the underside of the counter and darted into the back room. She stood by the back door, looking at you with concern and fear.

“What’s goin’ on Jill? And why do you have my gun?” she drawled, though you could hear the fear lacing her voice.

“The man, he—“ you were cut off by a loud crash that signaled the door being kicked in. “Just come on!!” you said, grabbing Anna’s arm and dragging her out the back door. You slammed the door behind you and pulled the small dumpster in front of it.

“Go home, get your boyfriend and go. Stay somewhere for the night, a hotel or something, get out of the city if you can. I’ve met the people this guy runs with, they’ll hunt you down if they knew you saw anything,” you told her, half whispering. Her eyes were wide with fear, but she nodded and bolted for her car. You stuffed her gun into the waistband of your pants. You had modified most of the shirts Lilli gave you so your wings could poke though, as you found it uncomfortable to have them smushed against your back with no airflow all day, and you bought a long indoor/outdoor coat to hide them from prying eyes—luckily, the coat hid the top of the gun as it poked out over the tucked-in uniform you wore. You ran down the opposite side of the alley, hoping that if nothing else, it would distract them from Anna if they knew she was there, allowing her to get away.

You darted around the corner and a couple men in suits began to chase after you. You dashed past the library, not stopping to wait at the intersections. A car almost hit you as you sprinted across the last street, but you braced your hands on the hood and more-or-less vaulted over the front bumper. You didn’t stop when you reached the park; in fact, you picked up your speed. Even though there were many trees, it was a relatively open space. You glanced over your shoulder and saw the men still chasing you, now with 4 other agents on their heels. _‘Shit,’_ you mentally cursed, as your lungs began to burn. You took the small stream that trickled from the pond in one leap, wishing you could stop to admire its beauty in the afternoon sunlight, but the voice in your head egged you on; _‘Run. Must get away. Can’t let them catch you.’_

Before you knew it, you were running onto yet another street. You paused to catch your breath; even though you knew the men were still after you, you couldn’t see them anymore. You gasped in large gulps of air, leaning on a fence, and scrunched your nose at the taste of blood in your throat. When your breathing regulated and the painful stitches in your side faded, you looked towards the park—and to your dismay, the agents were running towards you. A couple ran faster than the others, and you knew that if you didn’t move now, you would be their prey once more.

“Psst, hey, over here!!”

You looked around, not seeing anyone. The call came again, and you saw a boy, no older than 16, standing across and down the side street. You realized that he was the same kid who had pointed you to the post office, and you jogged over to him, as it would still be a few minutes before Hydra caught up.

“This way, I can get you out of here,” Peter said, beckoning to you, and then he darted off at a sprint. You followed, keeping pace with him, and you were surprised that he could run so fast. He led you this way and that, zig-zagging down side streets and alleyways, and you followed about 7 paces behind. Your lungs felt like they were trying to burn themselves out of existence as you approached a street you recognized—Rockaway Boulevard. You had walked down it your first night here in town. Peter darted around the corner and you followed, but as you watched him turn down the next side street, something heavy hit you square in the back, with a force that knocked you flat on your face.


	6. Chaos is Relative: Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chaos continues, and so does your Hydra-induced confusion, reader!!
> 
> Enjoy ^_^

You lay there, breathless and on the verge of passing out from oxygen deprivation, your hair draped over your face and creating an uncomfortable sauna of your own breath. Your lungs worked as hard as they could to return the air to your body, but you couldn’t bring yourself to move yet. You heard heavy bootsteps behind you, muffled by the blood roaring in your ears, and you shut your eyes. _‘I did my best. They may want to take me back again, but I’d like to see them try,”_ you thought, and you let your body relax, feigning unconsciousness.

“Got one. Sam, can you handle the rest? Looks like T’Challa was right,” a man said. You wondered who he was talking about and who he was talking to, but you didn’t dare move. They could be other people fighting the Octo-skull people for control of you, for all you knew.

“Sure. Should we take this one prisoner?” a deeper voice asked. You felt a familiarity towards it that you couldn’t place, like the déjà-vu feeling of a long-forgotten dream.

"Yeah, we'll take her in. She's wearing civilian clothes; if HYDRA is hiding among civilians now, she'll be valuable in rooting them out."

You heard a mechanical sound and you felt a gust of hot wind blow over you. You heard the first man’s footsteps come closer to you, and you planned out your attack. You felt him brush the hair out of your face, and your fearful (e/c) eyes snapped open, meeting calm baby blue ones. You immediately greeted the man’s face with a forceful punch, and in one swift movement, tangled your legs into his and pulled. He fell backwards, dazed, and you stood up to keep running. You didn’t make it half a block in your dazed state before the man tackled you, and you writhed underneath him like a pissed off snake.

“Let go of me!” you screeched, trying to land a hit on him anywhere you could. Unfortunately, he was heavier than he looked, and you couldn’t pull your arms out from under his torso.

“Just calm down, you aren’t going anywhere,” he replied, his stern words lilted with the remnants of a Brooklyn accent. His statement was more of a challenge to you, however, and you threw your head back, landing a forceful blow on his nose. He made a sound of surprise and reflexively backed off, and you took the opportunity to daze him. You jabbed an elbow back inbetween his ribs, and when he backed off a little more, you flipped over and kicked his crotch with both feet. He cringed, trying his best to do still do his duty, but you brought your legs up and kicked him in the chest, sending him flying back a couple feet. By now you were recovered from being dazed yourself, and you sprinted down the side street. You heard the man say something as you ran, but you weren’t going to go back and find out what it was. You dodged into the middle of the street, and you shed your coat as you ran. You untucked your shirt, and immediately pushed your secondary wings and your tail out of the top of your pants.  You felt a little ridiculous, but it was better than being caught and used as a guinea pig. You jumped as high as you could and immediately began flapping your wings. This time, you caught air, and your instincts took over. You sped up your flight and turned towards the airport, gaining height with each massive wingbeat—if nothing else, you could hide somewhere there until the men were gone.

Just as you crossed the fencing lining the airport boundaries, you heard a little whir behind you. You looked over your shoulder to see a tiny, silver and red delta-wing drone flying behind you.  In your distracted state, you didn’t see the other man creeping up on your other side, and he gave you a nasty shock when you turned to look ahead. You immediately dived, and the dark-skinned man followed your every move. You glided along the edge of the tarmac until you reached the parking garage. You bunched your body as you landed just inside the third floor opening, folding your wings as you did so. You took off at a sprint once more, heading for the stairs. You heard the other man copy your actions, the sound of his mechanical wingsuit folding together echoing off the walls. The door slammed behind you before he could say anything else, and he chased after you. By the time he reached the stairwell, you were 3 flights above him.

“(Y/n)?!” he shouted, climbing the stairs two at a time. You wondered who he was talking to, and you kept running. Whoever he was, you couldn’t let him catch you. He yelled the name again, and you thought it sounded familiar—even though it only held the same amount of familiarity that his voice did. You continued this one-sided exchange all the way to the roof, where you burst through the door. You ran to the edge and opened your wings, preparing to take off, when you heard the man call to you again.

“Wait!! Please!! I just want to talk,” he yelled, pleading. You stopped; he was one man without backup. You could handle it if things went South.

“What the fuck do you people _want_?!” you thundered as you spun to face him. He approached slowly, like he was coming up to a wild, rabid animal. You tensed with each step he took, preparing for an attack.

“It’s me, (y/n), it’s your Sam,” he said softly. The man apparently knew you, but he was entirely foreign to your half-blank, addled mind.

“Why the hell do you keep calling me (y/n)?”

His expression turned into one made by a kicked puppy. “That’s your name, (y/n l/n),” he replied.

“No. It’s not,” was all you said. You whipped around and launched off the edge of the building, but you heard him follow right behind you. You knew this wasn’t going to end well—whoever this Sam guy was, he apparently wasn’t terribly intelligent. You flew towards the city, mounting speed with every gigantic wingbeat, and before you knew it, you were among the tall buildings of Brooklyn. You dipped and dived between them, trying to shake the guy off your trail, but nothing was working. The sky had long since clouded over, and the occasional thunderclap echoed in the distance.

 You heard him fly up beside you, and he yelled, “Your name is (y/n), you were born in DC and we became friends in kindergarten, we went into the Air Force together, don’t you remember?”

You growled in your throat out of frustration and slammed into him, forcing him off course and under you as you gripped his shoulders with your retractable talons. He was flying upside down now, and your wings were the only thing keeping you both airborne.

“That’s not my name!!!” you snarled, punctuating every word with a punch to his face. “I don’t know you!!!”

The man didn’t make any move to fight back—he just stared at you with an expression of disbelief and sadness. You curved your wings up, flying parallel to a tall office building, and you threw him at the window. As you released him, your rage made itself known, and electricity snapped along the lengths of your arms, striking him in the chest like a bolt of lightning. He flew through the glass, slamming into rows upon rows of computers. You flew off, heading for your apartment—the only place you were sure was safe from all these crazy people. As you flew, the storm picked up, and soon rain was lashing down on you and rolling off your feathers. Lightning streaked the sky and sizzled in your wings. You felt as if you were one with the storm, but you weren’t sure why. Hell, only a few moments before, you didn’t know that you had power over electricity—or retractable talons, for that matter.

The storm calmed slightly as you landed on the roof of the apartment complex, and you darted down the fire escape to your floor. You hoped nobody was looking out their windows as you went. When you reached your floor, you jumped from the fire escape to your balcony, with help from your wings, and ducked inside the sliding door. You shook the remaining water from your wings like a duck, and you immediately changed your clothes—jeans and a hoodie. Your mind was racing with a million questions.

 _‘How did the octo-skull people know I was here? Do they know where I live too? Probably, Anna had it all on record at the shop.’_ You pulled out your old traveling bags as you thought of this. You began shoving your belongings and food into each one.

_‘Who was that man, and why does he think he knows me? Why did he call me (y/n)?’_

You flung the bags over your shoulder, stuffed your saved-up cash into your wallet and the outside pocket of a bag, and headed for the door. You pulled the hood over your head as you exited, but it didn’t quell the onslaught of questions assaulting your brain. You headed for the nearest train station, but this time, you weren’t going to work. You were getting away.


	7. The Other Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the chaos from everyone else's point of view!
> 
> Enjoy, dear readers!! :D

“Sam!!!” Steve yelled, scaling the stairs of the office building as fast as he could. He had watched helplessly as the girl with wings zapped him through the window, and he silently prayed that Sam was still alive with every step he took.

“Hey, guy, up here!” a man called from 2 floors higher. Steve bolted to him and rushed through the open door.

The room was an absolute disaster. The office workers stood in shock around a pile of demolished workspaces and shattered glass, jumping every time the broken computers emitted a _snap_ of electricity. The window had been blown clear of the frame, and the winds that blew through it tossed the airborne dust around the room. In the middle of it all was Sam, lying flat on his back, unmoving and staring at the ceiling.

“No!!!” Steve yelled, dropping his shield and rushing to his friend’s side. He collapsed next to him, ignoring the shards of glass tearing into his knees. He unhooked the wingsuit from Sam’s shoulders, and blood blossomed from several puncture marks in his shoulders. Just as he was about to start CPR, however, Sam blinked.

“Sam!! You’re alive!!” Steve said, thoroughly relieved. His relief was replaced by concern as Sam continued to lie there, as if he hadn’t even heard him. “Sam?”

It took a while, but eventually Sam turned is head to look at him, his expression still blank. “It was her,” he croaked hoarsely, as if he didn’t believe his own words.

“I know, but what happened? She threw you through a window, Sam, that seems like an odd way to have a reunion,” Steve asked, and immediately wondered if he had said too much.

“She doesn’t know, Steve. She doesn’t remember me. She looked at me like…like I was her worst enemy. She didn’t even know her own name,” he explained, quieting to a whisper at the end. Steve knew how he felt—it was like seeing himself after meeting Bucky on the bridge in DC.

He turned to look at the ceiling once more, but Steve intervened. “Come on, let’s get back to Wakanda. We can figure this out there,” he said, and Sam blankly obliged. Steve hauled him to his feet and picked up the wingsuit, manually forcing the wings to fold up—the circuits had been fried to hell when she electrocuted him. They took a train back to the airport and got back on the jet, but Sam remained in the same near-catatonic state the whole time.

*******

“She WHAT??”

“She got away from the team, sir! The guys who attacked us, they thought she was one of ours chasing that teenager and they took her out!” the agent said, practically groveling at the captain’s feet.

“Did it not occur to you that you **_might_** have tried to get her back? Do you not remember that she is our most valuable asset, now that the Winter Soldier is gone?” the captain roared, kicking the agent in the face. The agent whimpered pitifully as blood trickled from his broken nose.

“We—we didn’t have the backup, they took out everyone but me and Sokolov!” he cried, but the captain was having none of it. He dragged the agent to his feet by his collar.

“It doesn’t matter if you had backup or not, Bösch!! If you had actually attempted to retrieve the asset, you wouldn’t be standing here crying to me like a child who got in trouble!” he snapped, releasing the agent, who stumbled into the metal table.

“It’s not like she was all trained up and whatnot though, right?” the agent asked.

The captain’s face darkened with even more rage. “She was _completely_ trained, more so than the Winter Soldier. Maybe when we retrieve her, I’ll have her demonstrate her abilities to you by using you as her next target. Yes, I think that’s a good punishment,” he said, sneering at the agent. The agent’s eyes grew wide in terror, and he flinched as the captain snapped his fingers.

“Take him to the cells, gentlemen. He can stay there and await his punishment in the cold and dark,” he said, and two burly guards gripped the agent’s shoulders firmly as they began to drag him away. He screamed for mercy, but his cries were cut off by the closing of the door.

“What should we do now?” Zola asked. He had watched the whole thing from the corner of the room, coldly observing the interrogation. Schmidt sighed in frustration as he leaned on the table. The two had bonded closely over a shared preoccupation with their grandfathers’ names, and they closely resembled the original pair.

“I don’t know. That was the only lead we had on the asset, and those idiots let her escape,” he growled, frustrated.

Zola crept up to his side and thought for a moment. “Well, she can’t just pull a new identity out of her ass right away. We got her address from the shop she was working in, and we know where the other girl lives. We can send teams to look for her there, and while they do that we can try to track her imovements,” he suggested.

Schmidt looked thoughtful, and smiled gratefully at his old friend. “You’re truly a genius, Zola. We will get the asset back yet!!”

 

******

Peter walked home, guilt twisting in his stomach. He hadn’t meant to lead that lady into a trap—he would have gone another way if he had known that people were there. He didn’t help because he recognized the men who attacked her as Captain America and Falcon, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to take them on alone.

As he climbed up the stairs to his aunt’s apartment, he remembered how impressive the lady’s wings were, and he wondered if she was a mutant gone bad. He opened the door and muttered a quick greeting to his aunt; he was too lost in his own thoughts to say much else. He closed his bedroom door behind him, sighing heavily.

“What’s up kid? You look upset.”

Peter jumped and whirled around to see Tony Stark sitting at his desk. “What—how did you get in here?” he asked.

Tony stood and paced past him. “Oh, I have my ways. I was in the area, thought I’d come and check up on you,” he replied, leaning against the door. Peter nodded and slumped onto his bed.

“Honestly? I feel awful right now,” he said. Tony looked at him with concern, silently urging him to continue. “I tried to help someone today, but I just got them into a much worse situation.”

“What do you mean, kiddo?” Tony asked.

“There was a lady being chased by these guys in suits, they had that one symbol you told me about—the Kraken, or Hydra, whatever it was, they had it on them. I tried to help her by leading her away from them, but she still got caught,” Peter said, guilt lacing his words.

“By Hydra? That’s not good,” Tony said, concern rising in his voice. What- and who- would Hydra want here?

“No, by Captain America and the Falcon guy. At least, I think they caught her. The Falcon guy was chasing her towards downtown, I couldn’t keep up,” Peter replied.

“A fast kid like you couldn’t keep up with a normal person running? You could outpace that supersoldier if you wanted, too, just by sheer spiderweb skill,” Tony jokingly asked. Peter shook his head.

“They were flying, not running. The girl had a couple sets of huge-ass wings and two tails, she was a mutant,” he replied. Understanding lit up Tony’s face, along with underlying irritation towards Steve and Sam.

“Don’t worry about it too much, kid. If they caught her, they’re not gonna hurt her. They have that weird affinity for mutants, remember?” he asked, sitting down by Peter and nudging him with his shoulder. Peter smiled at him, grateful that Tony could put a positive outlook on his guilt.

“Now, what do you say I come in the front door like a normal person, and we can share some of that delicious-smelling dinner your aunt’s making,” Tony said, beaming, and Peter nodded. Tony put on the Iron-Man suit and ducked out the window, landing with a loud _clank_ on the sidewalk below. He definitely had a bone to pick with Cap now- if there was a dangerous mutant in New York, it needed to be dealt with by the proper people, not Cap's hero complex.


	8. Goodness Is Eternally Difficult

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, reader...you were wondering about your backstory? :P 
> 
> In which you finally get a chance to go through that file you stole on your way out 4 months ago. 
> 
> It feels like a massive chapter XD
> 
> Have fun, reader!!
> 
> P.S. I had to go off of Anthony Mackie's age for figuring out birth years and such because I couldn't find out how old the Falcon character actually is :P

            After four long hours of tense and paranoid travel, you half-jumped, half ran off the train when it finally stopped in Union Station. You immediately mixed yourself into the DC tourist crowd, keeping your head down and your shoulders hunched. You speedwalked through the station, trying to keep a lookout for the men who had chased you, all while trying to not look suspicious to the security guards. You walked past several restaurants, but you ignored the tug of hunger in your stomach. You pushed through a set of doors, wove your way through another crowd, then raced across the street between tour buses. When you reached a small park area you turned right—you had had enough running through parks for the day. As you rushed along the twilit cobblestone sidewalk, the thought occurred to you that you didn’t actually know where you were going. The entire area gave you that eerie déjà-vu feeling—the same as the man’s voice did, as if you had seen it before, but you had no actual recollection of ever having been there.

You continued down the street—E Street, a sign had informed you—and you figured that you’d have to come up on somewhere to stay sooner or later. You darted across North Capital, sneaking into the last moments of the crosswalk light, and you shivered slightly as the cool wind blew up the front of your slightly oversized hoodie. As you approached the next street, you heard a group of tourists laughing and talking loudly as they approached it from the left. Their voices floated over the air to you as they waited at the crosswalk, and you couldn’t help but listen in.

“Where should we go next? Food or the Law Center?” a girl asked.

“Kate, I don’t even know if we’re allowed to go in there. Let’s just go back to the hotel—they have food there,” replied one of the guys. The other guys in their group agreed gleefully.

“But Jake,” a shorter girl began, but he interrupted.

“No Angie, it’s 10 already, the weird people are gonna be out soon. Look, there’s one right over there,” he told her, nodding in your direction.

 You scowled under your hood as they sped up their pace, crossing and continuing down the street to your right, and you decided to follow a little behind them. They were heading for a hotel, and that was exactly the kind of place you needed right now. You waited a few moments to turn the corner, and you did so just in time to see them veer off the sidewalk towards a large building. A large, fancy overhang jutted from the side of the building and boasted the words “Washington Court Hotel”. The group of tourists piled into the spinning door, and you watched through the window as they rushed off towards the elevator. Once they were out of sight, you quietly opened the heavy glass door to the right of the spinning door, and you approached the front desk. A well-dressed man sat behind a nice computer, and he didn’t so much as look up as you stopped in front of the counter. You lightly cleared your throat, but he continued to ignore your presence. You pulled back your hood and quietly addressed him.

“Um…excuse me?”

He ceased his incessant tapping and glowered at you, clearly irritated. “Well, what is it you want, _miss_?” he hissed, more than asked.

“I—I was just wondering if I could book a room for a few days?” you replied, taken aback by his aggressive demeanor.

At this, he seemed to soften a little, and clicked a couple things on the computer. “Yes, I can arrange that. Your name is…?”

“Jill. Jill Summers,” you replied, but even though your alias had pretty much become your name, it held a newfound strangeness that you hadn’t felt towards it since you made it up.

He entered the name, and then asked for your ID. You handed it over and he scrutinized it, looking back and forth between it and you repeatedly. You had just begun to wonder if he had realized it was a fake when he handed it back to you. He rattled off the price for 4 days and you inwardly cringed, but handed him the $600 anyway. You were definitely going to have to find somewhere else to stay if you wanted any money left in your pockets by the end of the week. He handed you your room key gingerly and you muttered a thanks, wandering towards the elevator.

You went up to your room and unlocked the door, taking in the sight before you. A large bed sat on one wall, and a massive TV sat against another. A fancy wood door stood open on the far side of the room, showing off a lovely marble bathroom. The carpet felt cushy and clean under your shoes, and you pulled them off in the doorway. You shut and locked the door behind you, and you dumped your bags on the bed as you moved to shut the curtains.

You turned the bedside table light off and took off the hoodie, exposing your wings. They were sore from flying after such a long time of disuse, and you shifted them uncomfortably as you examined them for any injuries. The smaller feathers by the muscles were disheveled from flying in the rain and being shoved into clothes, and your primaries were separated and ratty-looking. The lightly curved talons that adorned the wrist-equivalent joint were growing out too long as well, as you hadn’t had access to more than dollar-store emery boards since you had escaped. You untucked your lower wings and your double-tail. Your tails looked windblown, but otherwise they were in decent condition; however, your secondary wings and the smaller talons adorning them were in similar shape to your primary wings. You sighed and folded them into their usual positions, flat against your body, with your upper talons over your shoulders and your lower talons over your hipbones. You meandered into the bathroom and turned on the light, taking in the array of bath products they provided.

 _‘Might as well get a shower,’_ you mused, running your hand along one of the soft, fluffy towels on the marble countertop. After peeling off the remainder of your clothes you got in the roomy shower, and you turned on just the hot water to start. You selected the soap and shampoo you would use and set them on the little amenity-shelf that was provided. Moving carefully and slowly due to your sore muscles, you washed away the fear and grime of the day, using your mostly-prehensile tails to wash your back—it was difficult to reach around your wings otherwise. The soaps smelled delightful, and you made a mental note to slip some of them into your bag before you left. You washed and straightened your feathers, pulling out the loose ones that signaled the beginning of your fall molt. When you were done in the shower, you wrapped one of the towels around yourself and headed back to your bags. You fished out your hair dryer—a housewarming gift from Anna—and you set to work, drying your hair first, then your wings, straightening out feathers as you went.

 By the time you were done, your small feathers had poofed up, making you look like a grown up cherub—you felt positively ridiculous, but at least you felt better. You pulled on a set of your altered pajamas, pushing your wings through, and draped the complementary bathrobe over one of the chairs—just in case anyone came knocking. You grabbed one of the complementary metal nail files and perched on the edge of the bed, setting to work on your talons. You filed them down to their usual size and re-shaped them into sharpened points, now aware that you may need them to fight. Now done with your personal maintenance, you swung your legs up onto the bed, lightly kicking your bags off the end. You heard one of them dump its contents across the floor as it landed, and you sighed resignedly. You stood up once more and surveyed the contents strewn across the floor, and you rolled your eyes at it. Kneeling, you tossed all the items back in the bag, until you reached the manila folder you had all but forgotten about—the file you had taken on your way out of that compound.

 You sat in the middle of the bed and put it down in front of you, staring at it. Now, you had nothing but time, and it lay right in front of you. “Subject 0125—Project Phoenix” was written on the tab, and you tapped your fingers on the front of the folder. You were sure this was a file on you, after all, it was in the same room. Your hesitation came from wondering whether you actually wanted to know what they had done to you or not. Of course you wanted to know, you were dying to know why you couldn’t really remember anything before that day you escaped, but at the same time you dreaded finding something too awful to bear written in the file’s pages. You stalled, grabbing a bottle of water from your bag and a snack. You returned to the bed and took a drink, staring at the file. _‘Whatever they did happened to me, and not knowing about it isn’t going to change the past. I might as well find out directly from the source,’_ you decided, but you were still hesitant. You shifted the file and a picture fell out, and it threw you for a loop.

It was a shoulders-up picture of you, but you looked so…different. Your features were exactly the same, but you wore a military captain’s uniform and hat, with your wings folded over your jacket the same way as you folded them now. Your hair, apparently shorter then, was pulled up into a tight bun, and your lightly-applied makeup accented your natural features beautifully. The photo-you stood against a blue background, smiling at the camera and positively exuding confidence and kindness, but also a “don’t mess with me or you’ll regret it” seriousness. You stared at it for a long while, disbelief written over your features.

 _‘Is this really who I used to be?’_ you wondered, as you had no recollection of the photo ever having been taken. Eventually you put it down—whatever the file held, you had to know. You flipped open the cover of the thick file to see a description form. A paperclip sat in a blank corner—you assumed that was where the picture was. You replaced it, and began to read.

**Name: (y/n m/n l/n)**

**Date of Birth: (y/bd), 1978**

**Place of Birth: Washington D.C., USA**

**Father’s Name: (y/f/n)**

**Mother’s Name: (y/m/n)**

You paused, taking in just this very basic information. You could already tell that so far, everything the man with the wingsuit had told you was true, and you were more than thrilled that you actually knew what your true name was. Anticipation welled inside you as you read the title of the next section, and you took a sip of water.

**Past: (y/n l/n) was born in Washington, D.C. on (y/bd), 1978. Her family moved to the Morningside Heights sector of Manhattan, New York in 1982, due to her father being relocated for a job. She began school at age 5, and made a friend named Samuel Wilson. (y/n) and Samuel remained great friends through their school years, and after graduating high school in 1986, the duo entered the Air Force, temporarily relocating to the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. They were deployed to different areas of the world, and did not reunite for 3 years (see list of past deployment). (y/n) moved through the Air Force ranks quickly, due to her skill and intellect that allowed her to complete the education needed for said promotions at an accelerated rate (see list of ranks/past education), and stopped when she became an Air Force Captain. She was brought back to America from deployment to lead a new pararescue operation developed by the Air Force called Project Falcon (aka The 58 th Special-Ops Rescue Squadron), of which Samuel Wilson was a member. She personally completed the training of her comrades in their new technology, and the team completed many successful rescue operations under her leadership. After the loss of two members of the team (Riley and Samuel Wilson), they had to work harder to complete successful missions with fewer members. On May 17, 2006, the remainder of the operation team was destroyed over Siberia, attempting a mission in a blizzard. The remaining soldiers were killed on impact, but (y/n) survived the blast, thanks to healing antibodies from her mutation (see mutation information sheet). (y/n) was retrieved by HYDRA operatives in the area and brought to the Siberia base, where she is currently undergoing intensive training and electrotherapy, as well as the testing of newly developed enhancing solutions (see routine sheets).**

You sat back against the pillows in shock. The information flooded your brain, but no new memories weaseled their way to the surface. You felt as if you were reading about someone with the same name as you, another girl named (y/n l/n). If this were all true, why hadn’t anyone come for you after the blizzard? Surely they would have come looking for your team, wouldn’t they? Your mind felt clogged, like you were forcing in too much information at once, but curiosity overpowered your growing headache. You flipped the page over to find a section entitled, “Routine Sheets”. You lifted the stapled top paper, expecting to find another informative paragraph, but what you got were detailed sheets summarizing different routines that had been used since 2006. Each sheet was a month’s compilation of routines. You flicked to the end, surprised that it had ended at 2010. You went back to the beginning and began to read through the papers that were so neatly broken down into hour-by-hour routine lists. The first year was very basic, as you had evidently been in a coma. The sheet listed a few things that they had given you in cryptic long chemical names you skimmed over, with an added “(see medication sheet for more information)” at the bottom of the page. Tired of the runaround, you pulled the sheets out of the folder and plopped them next to you, fishing out the paper labeled, “Medication Sheet”.

For the first year, they had given you some heavy-duty antibiotics and an experimental version of a new supersoldier serum, but it failed. In the few months afterward, they gave you a new version of the serum, that actually worked, and had sped up the healing process, but left a lot of scar tissue and your bones brittle where they had been broken, and also had woken you from the coma. According to the paper, you were anything but compliant, and they did something they called “wiping” to remove your conscious memory. As the months went on, they instated hundreds of different kinds of training, between hand-to-hand and weaponry combat, and figuring out how to use your wings in a fight—and if you disobeyed at all, the forms of torture they used were carefully documented and your reactions to each well-described; it made you sick to your stomach. Eventually, the training dropped off, and missions were instated in their place. They were only ever labeled “mission”, however, and “see separate file” was written at the bottom of each page, next to a bold asterisk. There were a few more instances labeled “wiping”, but they vanished after the people had begun administering a regular dose of a memory-blocking agent. You felt anger boil in your stomach as you read that—apparently it had worked, because you still couldn’t remember a damn thing. Evidently they had used that in combination with an even stronger supersoldier serum--one that strengthened the brittle bones-- and the mutation enhancer all the way up until it stopped being documented, and they had deemed the combination “Phoenix Serum”. You furrowed your eyebrows as you dug through the remaining papers, looking for the rest of them, but you came up empty handed. Two loose papers stapled together caught your eye, and you pulled them over to you. One was dated for 2013, the other for just a few months ago. The first read:

**Subject became too volatile for use and was undergoing intensive memory removal therapy in Lab 6, in the suspension tank. Unfortunately, due to an unforeseen evolution of the subject’s mutation (see mutation information sheet), the usual methods of tranquilization used failed to keep the subject sedated. Subject escaped confines and resisted further sedation, resulting in the death of several agents. Recommended emergency tranquilizer: 15ml liquid cyanide injection**

**Subject is now in Location 637, Lab 18. It is kept in the quarantine suspension chamber, under video and physical surveillance. Due to the unexpected death of Dr. Vasiliev, subject’s case has been transferred to the care of Dr. Zola. Subject is still receiving her daily doses of the Phoenix Serum.**

You raised your eyebrows, and wondered if that might be what the vague memory of the bright light and people flying against walls had been. You skimmed the next page, which detailed how your heart rate and whatnot had changed one day. Judging by the date, you figured that was the day you escaped. May 27th was your own personal independence day. You were, however, stunned that their emergency plan was to violently murder you.

You skimmed down the mutation information sheet, and it simply listed what happened to your mutation and when. First your wings grew more—you hadn’t noticed a difference, but that wasn’t saying much—and then your retractable talons formed. Apparently your immune system also became impenetrable to the majority of deadly sicknesses, though strangely, you were still susceptible to the common cold. Along with this came a rise in your resting body temperature, the ability to succumb to, then burn off highly toxic substances in your body, and the ability to heal exceedingly fast--evidently, you had even healed and reabsorbed the leftover scar tissue. You thought back to the day you had escaped; you had been sliced up by the barbwire, but by the time you met Lilli, you were fine. There were also some significant enhancements to your senses, particularly sight and hearing.

The part that was the most surprising to you was the notation that indicated that you had control over large amounts of electricity, and that there were signs of an emerging ability to control some form of weather. The paper was dated before 2010, so you assumed that you probably finished developing that mutation; though you had a feeling that it had been around long before they discovered it. The newfound information also explained why they chose cyanide, of all things, to tranquilize you. You piled the papers into a neat stack and stuffed them in the folder again, shutting the cover with a little too much force.

You put your head in your hands and tried to calm your speeding thoughts. All of this—your memory issue, being hunted, the total ruin of the life you had apparently once led—it was all because of these people. These stupid octo-skull Hydra freaks who wanted nothing more than to experiment on you like a couple of demented neighborhood bullies with a stray cat. Even though you still held no personal memory of your past life, you felt cheated, because you didn’t see how you deserved any of this. In a rush of emotion you began to sob, and you cried for it all—for how your life just got upended, for how those cruel people treated you, and for the incredible person you apparently once were. You felt broken from the inside out, and you weren’t sure what to do with yourself anymore. The disgust and emotion welled up in your throat, and you dashed to the bathroom, depositing the snack you'd just finished eating in the toilet. When you were sure that the vomit had subsided, you slowly returned to the bed, tears still running down your face with each shuddering breath. Part of you wanted to try to find the dark-skinned wingsuit man--Sam, you now knew-- because if his story and your little bio matched up, he was apparently once your best friend. You doubted he would give you a second chance, however, seeing as you bolted him through a sizable office window after beating the shit out of him. You gave up on trying to decide your next move, and instead you threw the file into the nightstand drawer, slammed it shut, turned over, and cried yourself to sleep.


	9. It's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello, hello, hello, readers!!  
> I deeply apologize for having been away for so long--technical issues kept me off for the summer, but thankfully most of those have been resolved; therefore, I bring you all the chapter some of you have been waiting for for way too long!!  
> I'm happy to see some new readers have discovered and enjoyed the fic during my absence as well ^_^
> 
> So for a quick recap, you threw Sam through a window, ran to DC, and discovered the information contained within your file :D  
> Surely you didn't think the peace would last that long though, did you? ;)
> 
> Read on, and I hope you enjoy it!!

You stayed shut in your room for a couple of days, relying on room service to bring you food. A young man by the name of Mike somewhat became your personal food-bringer, showing up at your room door with an announcement and personal review of the food. You were still scarred from what you had discovered within the pages of your file. Mike helped to speed the process along with his cheesy humor, and he never brought up the fact that you barely opened the door when he knocked. You didn’t have a crush on him; it was more of an odd friendship. On the evening of the third day, you decided that you were tired of looking at the inside of the room; plus, you’d have to go looking for somewhere cheaper to stay sooner or later.

            You carefully buckled two of the belts that Lilli had given you around your wings; one on the top ones, and one across the bottom. The top one rested just below your bra, and the second wrapped awkwardly across your hips, but it would have to do. You had realized that you sometimes subconsciously moved them around; shifting them, fluttering them slightly against your back, occasionally stretching them out entirely—you didn’t think that strangers walking behind you would take it well if your clothes suddenly started squirming on your back. Honestly, you weren't sure how problems hadn't already arisen, but you weren't going to complain. With any luck, the belts would keep them somewhat restrained from random unnecessary movement. You put on a slightly baggier shirt and a sweater, because even though your wings sat flush to your back, they still made a slightly noticeable lump under your shirts. You wished you hadn’t just flung your coat into the street as you ran; it had concealed your wings well. You carefully tucked your wings and tail into baggy jeans, and you wound each side of your tail around your legs, respectively, to keep it from fidgeting too much. You checked yourself over in the bathroom mirror, considering brushing your teeth, but you decided it could wait until you got back. You nabbed a slice of orange from the empty dinner plate that rested on the foot of your bed and bit into it, holding it in your mouth while you got your fake ID and whatnot together to go out. When you were finally ready, you bit into the orange and grabbed the plate, chewing thoughtfully as you left the room and locked the door. You carefully put the plate just outside the door—as was standard—and headed for the stairs. You didn’t much trust elevators, even in a ritzy place like this.

 You continued to eat the orange as you made your way down the stairs and out into the lobby. A glance towards the elevator told you that you had made a good decision; it was only now heading up, it would have taken you twice as long to get down here if you had had to wait. You nodded to the grumpy, posh man behind the front desk, who once again regarded you with a contemptuous glance. You swung through the spinning door without giving it further thought.

 _‘Just because I apparently had a fucked up past doesn’t mean I have to let some rich guy with a stick up his ass make my evening miserable,’_ you decided, allowing a slight spring to enter your step as you walked down the street. The sunset reflecting off the passing storm clouds bathed the street in an ethereal sepia glow, bright enough to reflect from the puddles and wet streets the gale had left in its wake. This time you had nothing to do with it, but the thunderstorm had certainly helped to brighten your mood.

            You sighed, breathing in the light, refreshing smell of rain and the musky smell of damp earth. It was a nice reprieve from the usual smoggy smell and the stuffiness of the room, and it helped to brighten your mood even more. You scowled at a scaffolding as leftover rain unexpectedly dripped onto your uncovered head, leaving an unpleasant chilled spot on your scalp. You paused at a crosswalk, wiping your sleeve over the wet spot in an attempt to soak out some of the water. As you glanced around impatiently, you saw a man in a business suit and shades watching you a little too intently from across the street.

 _‘Why would he be watching me? Maybe he’s just looking over here, and I’m being paranoid. Yup. I bet that’s it,’_ you thought, glancing at him uneasily. You decided to test your theory, just to be sure. You politely nudged your way through the small crowd to the left of where you had been standing and wrapped your arms around yourself. You glanced at him out of the side of your eye, and you could swear his head was tilted a little more towards you. Feigning irritation, you paced to the other side of the crowd, going around the back of it and discreetly tossing your orange peel away. You acted as if you were checking the opposite streetlights to see how long was left until you could cross, and it gave you a good excuse to sneak another glance at the man.

 He was fully looking at you now; there was nobody else around to look at, given that you were standing a good few feet away from the crowd. He adjusted his tie on his expensive-looking suit, and lightly scratched his interestingly-groomed beard. He then slipped his free hand up to his ear and began speaking, his fingers tightening in a sure hold on the briefcase in his other hand. He was still looking at you, and you had a feeling that he wasn’t good news.

 _‘Well, at least I got a few days’ break,’_ you thought sullenly, melding yourself back into the back of the crosswalk crowd. Making sure that there were taller people than you between you and the suspicious man, you began to slip back away from the crowd, returning the way you had come. You picked up your pace to a speedwalk, hoping to get some space between you and the man before the crosswalk light changed without seeming suspicious to the other passerby. You glanced over your shoulder to see the crowd beginning to move across the crosswalk, and you saw the man’s neatly-combed hair still on the other side of the street. You realized that he probably thought you were in with the crowd, and you got a surge of adrenaline at your tiny sliver of unexpected luck. You bolted the rest of the way back to the hotel, not looking over your shoulder to see if the man had discovered your trick or not. You clambered up the front stairs and all but slammed through the spinning door, heading straight for the stairwell. You trusted your speed more than the elevator’s, and you shot up the stairs, taking them in twos and threes.

You burst through the door to your floor and sprinted to your room. You jammed the key into the lock and flung open the door, heading straight for your belongings. There wasn’t much out of place that needed to be packed—in truth, you had expected to be found a lot sooner than you had been. You had sewn your file into the lining of your bags during your self-induced isolation, not wanting to see it anymore, much less handle it, but holding it for safekeeping was better than leaving it behind for god-knows-who to find. In a matter of minutes, you had your things together and your bags slung over your shoulder, ready to go. You burst back out of your room and headed for the stairwell again, but as you opened the door, loud, argumentative voices drifted up and echoed off the walls. One voice you recognized as the man from behind the desk, and you supposed the other one was the crosswalk man. You gave a frustrated growl and shut the stairwell door, heading for the door leading to the fire escape—clearly you weren’t getting out by way of the lobby, whether you took the stairs or the elevator. It was alarmed, but with any luck, it would cause some chaos that would make it easier to escape. You tossed your key to the ground behind you and pushed through the door, and immediately a shrill shriek echoed through the many levels of the building. You dashed down the stairs as fast as you could, quickly slamming through the exit to the alleyway as dozens of other footsteps clambered onto the emergency staircase above you.

Without waiting for the crowd to catch up, you bolted for the sidewalk, nearly getting clipped by a car as you partially stumbled into the street. The hotel itself was beeping now, floors of loud alarms echoing out through the open windows and doorway, but you didn’t stop and stare at the chaos you had created. You continued running down the street, heart hammering away in your chest, and for a moment you considered takeoff. This idea went out the window when your wings met the belts; they could easily break through the thin leather straps, but you knew you’d need them once you went underground again. You rounded a corner just in time to avoid a painful-sounding blast, the heat from which momentarily licked your face as you passed by. Behind you, a man in a flying metal suit zipped around the corner, aiming several more blasts in your direction. A second man followed, albeit somewhat unsteadily, as if he were only getting used to his all-silver suit. If worst came to worst, he would be an easy target.  You veered out of the way as a third man fluttered down into your path, and you scowled confusedly at his bright red, somewhat robotic-looking complexion as you evaded his ambush. You slid your arms into the hoodie, hurriedly unclipping the belts as you took care not to let your bag slip off your shoulders. The flying team was still hot on your heels, so without warning you dashed into a long overpass tunnel for a moment’s break. You fumbled in the dark, stuffing the belts and hoodie into your bag and tugging on a shirt with holes for your wings, which you gladly freed, along with your golden tail. You noticed the tickling feeling of running blood on your leg as you continued on without your bag; evidently, you hadn’t evaded the shots as well as you thought.

A glance to each end of the tunnel told you that you were blocked in—the red man and the unstable man in the silver suit stood guard at one end, and the multicolored-suited man hovered at the other. You smirked through your panic—their greatest weakness lay in their current strengths, given that electricity powered the suits and the other man looked to be a decent conductor. You took a few running steps before taking off, supplementing partial flaps to accommodate the narrow, low-flying space, gathering as much speed as possible as you hurtled toward the single man at the end. Thunder rumbled overhead, and you felt your feathers lift slightly at the suggestion of lightning buzzing in the air. The familiar crackle of electricity buzzed on your wings, and you fought to harness it the way you had with Sam. Without further ado, you shot out from under the bridge, taking a number of steadying wingbeats as you kicked your momentum into the man of iron, sending him spiraling away with a sharp snap of electricity. The other two were on alert immediately, but you now had the advantage of being in the air.

You took to the skies, letting your wings stretch out to their fullest extent as your double tail trailed behind you, flicking slightly with each dolphin-like motion of your spine, in time with your wingbeats. The silver-clad man rushed to the other armored person, but the one with red skin gave chase, seemingly floating through the air behind you. You banked sharply, letting the  opposing wind ruffle through your feathers as it carried you straight into the storm itself. The air hummed with potential energy, occasionally falling silent when lightning would strike the earth below. You dipped and dived, following the air currents and thermals as you tried to shake the man off your trail, but it was in vain. He remained close in pursuit like a falcon, darting the same airflows you did with just as much accuracy. When he got too close, you lashed out with your tails, momentarily snaring his neck as you attempted to incapacitate him from the air; to your frustration, he simply faded out, floating through the thin muscle like a ghost. True lightning lashed him, with a similar lack of effects. As you made for your final dive, however, a sharp beam of gold light flashed by like a laser beam, slicing through the tendons of your rightmost wings with a cautery sizzle. You shrieked in pain, voice getting lost in the power of the storm, diving as best you could; your loose, limp wings did nothing to help.

Your touchdown was a rough half-crash—you barely managed to keep your footing as the weight of your partially severed wings threw you off balance, the feathered appendages doing little more than twitching at your desperate requests. The multicolored armored man landed nearby, toting your bag on his shoulder, and the red man gracefully drifted down at your back. Blood ran down your sides and leg from the unseared portions of your new wounds, dripping over the ground in crimson droplets as you frantically turned, trying to keep an eye on the both of them, good wings held up defensively, scorched wings dragging uselessly across the small grassy area. The scorched nature of the wounds was certainly putting a damper on your healing abilities. The storm continued to rage on in answer to your pain, pelting down large droplets of rain like liquid bullets as the downpour commenced.

At one point, the red man attempted an approach, but you were too far panicked and fearful to hear the words of reassurance he tried to offer; you immediately slammed your primary wing into his front like an angry swan, gouging his jaw as your talon caught flesh, flinging him a good few yards away. The multicolored suited man made to pick up the slack, but refrained as the silver man dove from the sky, landing a solid, metallic punch to your temple. You immediately slumped sideways onto the grass, heavily dazed, and you barely registered your wings being folded and restrained as you were more-or-less tied up and stuck in the back of a car, the mens' voices muffled by the temporary hearing loss from the force of the blow. The pervading darkness of unconsciousness set in before the team ever made it into the car, leaving you entirely at their mercy.

It was going to be a long night.


	10. A/N

Holy fucking ravioli guys!!

So I've been catching up on newer Marvel movies in prep to go see Infinity War, and holy crap, I've got so many new ideas!! I haven't updated this cause life happened hard, but I am back and working on things now!

This shall continue, but slowly, because I currently have a low-broken nail and typing hurts like hell, but HOLY CRAP I AM SO EXCITED

This has been your update PSA XD


	11. Just Running Scared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear reader!!  
> If you haven't already re-read through this fic due to the severe delay in posting, here's a quick recap of what's happened so far:  
> You ran from New York to escape Sam Wilson, a man who you did not remember as your friend. Upon your arrival in DC, your file exposed the truth about your past. Unfortunately, your peace only lasted a week; now, you are in the hands of more men you do not know, and severely injured from your fight with them.  
> Now, you are somewhere entirely new.  
> Welcome to the compound, reader!!

              You jumped as you woke, finding yourself draped across the back seat of the mens’ car. The car was still, silent—and to your surprise, empty, save for the morning sunlight that filtered through the windows. You shifted in an attempt to look around, but immediately froze with restrained scream as pain shot through your wing, up your back, and into your shoulder; the sour taste of bile stained your tongue as you looked down at yourself. You saw that you were heavily bound with some sort of nanotech wire that pinned down your arms and both sets of wings, as well as pinning your tails to your spine, and the leftover bleeding from your back had been staunched with a hastily-wrapped bandage. To your surprise, your legs had been left loose; a quick stretch of them informed you that they were fine.

              Blood stained the seat where your head had been resting; the resultant wound from the silver man’s strike, no doubt. You could feel the dried blood on your skin, making your forehead itch; you rubbed it on the seat and to your relief, the wound itself had healed closed. You tried to shift your torso again as your eyes scanned the car for possible escapes, but you were greeted with a similar painful result, vomit threatening to creep up your throat a second time. The heat from the red man’s yellow strike had done you no favors. The cauterized flesh rubbed against itself, the cooked muscle refusing to fuse back together, but you could tell that the ligaments and tendons had repaired themselves for the most part.

            The sound of heavy, metallic steps sounded from outside the car, and you immediately froze. You hastily placed your head where it had been and let yourself go entirely limp, closing your eyes without squinting. The movements came to you as easily as reflex—you assumed it had been part of your training, once. You remained entirely still as the car doors on either side of you opened. Nobody spoke, but you didn’t dare open your eyes to see who was there. You nearly jumped as a pair of metal-clad hands gripped your shoulders, fingers hooking under the wire bindings. Another pair of metal hands scooped your ankles, and the pair lifted you up and through the car without ever scraping your injured wings on the seat.

The bright sunlight seared your eyes through the lids as you were brought into daylight, and you fought the urge to scrunch your eyes. The first set of metal hands shifted; one arm slid under your ribs, and the other scooped under your knees to hold you. The second set of hands let go, and you felt yourself begin to move as the person holding you began to walk. You lightly clenched your jaw, pushing down both the urge to yelp and the threat of bile as each heavy step jarred your injuries. If you hadn’t been awake before, you certainly would be now. After some paces, you began to realize that there was not a person holding you, but some sort of automated humanoid; its steps were too rigid, too precise to be that of a living person, but whoever had created it had done an almost convincing job. Almost. It would have been more convincing if your wing hadn’t felt like it was being put through a blender with each step.

Your wonderings were cut off as a new pain jolted your body—the thing carrying you was climbing stairs, and each step was, if it were possible, even more jarring than regular walking. A second set of footsteps echoed just behind; two automated things must have been sent to retrieve you. The thought of _robot_ crossed your mind, but you decided that these things were too advanced to be given so basic a title.

The hiss and cool breeze of doors opening greeted your ears and ruffled your blood-matted hair. The dry indoor air smelled cold and clinical, like an office, yet other scents mingled in made it smell almost…homey. The thing carried you stopped abruptly in the middle of whatever room you were in, sending another streak of pain through you, though each new pain grew less nauseating each time. You weren’t sure if you were merely adjusting to the pain, or if your rising adrenaline was simply quelling it for the time being, but you weren’t complaining. The other thing's footsteps receded as it walked away, and its gait changed as it began to scale what must have been stairs.

            Cautiously, you peeked open your left eye a crack, taking in the room as you scanned for escape. The decorator had certainly tried to blend home and business. The floor and walls were a shade of grey—you couldn’t quite tell if it was tile or metal. Bench seats, abstract-style chairs, and potted plants littered the room, and flanked the stairs that went up. A set of closed doors lay before you, and sunlight lit the room through the ceiling-high windows. You spied a hallway that led beneath the stairs as well; there would be a few seating and plant obstacles, but you knew you’d manage.

You closed your eyes again and redirected your focus inward, on your powers, mustering what you could. The nap you’d taken against your will on the way here had restored some of your energy, but you also felt the day’s events weighing heavily on you as your body expended what extra energy it could to repair itself. After a moment, you felt your electricity buzzing beneath your skin. It wasn’t as strong as it had been previously, but it was very much there, and you had every intention of using it. A deep breath in, and your lightning zapped from your skin, sparking as it met the metal of the thing holding you. A short scream escaped your throat as you fell from its arms, landing painfully on your back. You watched as the thing—which you now saw, was indeed an advanced robot—convulsed and zapped before falling over, its eyes going dark as the stench of fried technology rose from its wiring. Despite the shock that it had worked, you didn’t have any time to lose to admiring your work.

You kicked your legs upward, rolling yourself up onto your shoulders. The pain of your weight rolling across your injuries burned, and you fought back another scream as you dropped your legs toward your uninjured side. You rolled on your shoulders and pushed into the momentum as best you could, rolling onto your side, and a shove into the ground with your shoulder as you rolled onto it alone gave you the inertia to get yourself up onto your knees. You were on your feet in an instant, and you immediately bolted for the hallway, dodging around plants and furniture like a fleeing ostrich. Windows and photos flew past, and you barely registered the rooms as you bolted; you were more worried about finding an exit that could open without hands, or a window that didn’t look like it was made of four inch ballistic glass. As you rounded a corner, you looked forward just in time to see that there was someone walking towards you, and you skidded to a stop just in time to avoid running them down.


End file.
